Hi I'm Emma, I am absolutely passionate about science and love to inspire others to feel the same.  I strongly believe that our children are amazing and can learn to do anything they want with the right help.  I want to be that help for as many people as possible.  This is why I have co-founded a Community Interest Company that will help me do that!

Here is a little bit of the background that got us to this point!

I am privileged to work in my current capacity with children from all over the world and have taken part in some amazing events throughout my career.  More recently I have become involved in working to promote global competency and citizenship through STEM, and I was honoured to be asked to speak at a summit in Beijing.  As a trainee teacher I was involved in the Boeing Schools Build a Plane project where a group of students built a real flying microlite.  Through this I attended parliament, flew a plane myself and visited the royal aeronautical society headquarters.  I was moved to tears during this project several times! I will never forget stifling tears of pride as my students presented their project to MP’s, or the feeling of panic when we realised we had used the wrong rivets and had to ask for new ones.  Seeing my students succeed and grow absolutely cemented that teaching was the profession for me!

Following this I set up various clubs within the school, showcasing my students work at any opportunity and endeavouring to bring to them opportunities from outside their usual environment.  Through this my girls into physics group got chosen to run a stall at an air show on behalf of the STEMnetwork, where we met celebrities and ran activities for visiting families.

As I have progressed through my teaching career, I have held varying responsibilities in schools and have been lucky enough to teach both engineering and science as well as my own STEM course.

When I had my own family (and my world changed for the better!) I stepped away from traditional teaching in schools and chose to stay home with my daughter, supported by my brilliant husband.  I established myself as a tutor and it was through this that I began working with home educated students as well as those in school.  This provided many opportunities to become involved in education in the wider community and showcase the work of some amazing young people!  Whilst doing this I got to explore different ways of teaching and learning, free from the confines of a strict schedule.

When I returned to school teaching, I carried this with me and endeavoured to make learning exciting but efficient!  I wanted to help all of my students to not just succeed at learning, but to love it too.  To my mind there is no better medium for this than Science! OK I may be a bit biased, but hear me out…

Science is in everything we do, in fact it’s in everything that we are, so showcasing these wonders of science can begin within our own bodies.  Did you know our bones are living and adapt to the different stresses we put on them?! So if you start a new sport or activity our bones actually change to help accommodate the new forces that they are exposed to.  On the topic of forces, have you ever thought about a world without friction?  We wouldn’t be able to pick anything up! Marbles in oil is a great way to demonstrate this by the way; and pick them up with chopsticks for extra challenge!

I digress…however you can probably tell what kind of teacher I am!

As well as having fun I have extensively researched, teaching, learning and best practice for both within and outside of a school and use this to ensure my lessons are engaging, effective, interactive and helpful.

I have tutored many different students over the last ten years, giving me insight to how different people learn and engage with information, and I have found it exciting trying to figure out the most effective ways to help them.  My tutoring schedule became fuller and fuller, leading to me unfortunately turning students away.  This is something that makes me sad.  It goes against what I want to do, but days are only so long!  Then, one night watching films on a streaming platform, I had the idea! “What if I could do this with my lessons?!”

Chase My Grades was born!